on time
by theory of mice
Summary: It is too late when they burst through the double doors of the storeroom and find men piled around her, various limbs and shelves broken and stacked upon each other. Seven in total, against one, solitary woman. Large beasts, Russian, packing more than muscle and brawn. Her father would be proud.


It is too late when they burst through the double doors of the storeroom and find men piled around her, various limbs and shelves broken and stacked upon each other. Seven in total, against one, solitary woman. Large beasts, Russian, packing more than muscle and brawn. Her father would be proud.

But as they kick the double doors in and survey the scene, weapons loaded, cocked, aimed, there is a scuffle in the back corner where Ziva is dispatching the last man.

He has her pinned against the wall with a square metal bar pressed to her stomach, the kind with notches to hang gas station snacks and expired nutter-butters. Tony and Gibbs tighten their stance, target locked. But the preemptive words, "Federal agents, drop your weapon!" seem to have a lethal effect on the mountainous man. He topples away from Ziva, and when the shock has settled, the burnished handle of a combat knife winks merrily at them from the Russian's neck.

From the corner, Ziva whimpers faintly and holds the bar protruding from her stomach tenderly, delicately, as she slides to the ground.

It is too late when Tony's feet refuse to move, but Gibbs takes action. He would climb over mountains to reach her, and so he does, scaling the mounds of bodies and debris she has collected like so many souvenirs of her achievements. He reaches her, briefly choking on emotion before he breathes _in_ and _out_, the ferrous fumes of her blood accumulating in his airways.

"DiNozzo, call 911. _Now!_" He almost feels guilty for rousing his senior agent from whatever defense his mind has made. Everyone owed love to Ziva David, but Tony harbored years of unpaid debts between them. Some of that was Gibbs' fault. Some of it was acutely theirs. Regardless, reality will likely hurt him overtly.

"Eyes on me, Ziver." Gibbs reaches out to touch her, ground her. He should have noted the lust in her eyes still, remnants of losing pieces of herself in the fight. Now she shrinks back and shifts away, and the pole dislodges and leaves a gaping maw in her belly. Blood blooms on her white shirt quickly in the shape of a flower, petal by petal.

Far away, Tony's voice echoes against the barricade of metal shelving as he gives their address breathlessly, desperately, over and over while he navigates reception. Somehow, it is this that Ziva stirs to and returns to.

She takes a tiny, trembling gasp before looking down at the hot wetness spreading over her abdomen. It saps her strength.

"Gibbs…" she gulps. Her hand finds the hole and clenches, hard.

"Alright, just breathe." He strips his jacket and makes a ball. "It's gonna be okay. We're here."

She lets him sit beside her against the wall, surrounded by wreckage, and press the jacket to her wound. She groans from the pressure, light headed.

"Boss!" Tony pushes aside a filing cabinet and makes a path towards them, running. He holds the phone balanced on top of the car's emergency medical pack. "They're having trouble finding our coordinates." He takes in Ziva's grey face, labored breathing, blood-soaked shirt and pants. "But they've dispatched and they'll be here soon." He places his phone on the ground between them, as a barrier, a screen. "Speakerphone, boss."

Gibbs grunts and nods at the medical pack. "Unpack that." He glares at the phone. "This is Agent Gibbs with Officer Ziva David. Have you found our coordinates yet?"

The phone transmits a thin, fragmented female's voice. "_Agent Gibbs, you're currently in an area of poor reception and we're having difficulty pinging your location. We have dispatched men based on Agent DiNozzo's general description. Are you with Miss David, right now?_"

Ziva groans as Gibbs shifts to let Tony into the corner, arms full of white gauze.

"Yes, we're with her right now."

"_Can you describe the victim and accident to me, please?_" The woman's voice remains detached and bored.

"Young, female, gored in the stomach with a metal bar." Gibbs grits his teeth, feeling the warm weight of blood soaking through his makeshift compression. "Switch me out, DiNozzo."

Tony presses a stack of gauze to Ziva's stomach. She stays quiet and still, head lolled back against the wall, breath _in_, breath _out_, resolute, determined.

The woman's voice comes back. "_What position is she in? Is she safe?_"

"She's safe, sitting upright." Gibbs spits. He puts a bloodied hand on Ziva's shoulder, gently. "You still with me, Ziver?"

She trembles minutely, swallows. "I am… _Gibbs_?" Her eyes open and stare widely at him, like a child caught mid-lie. "I… is he…" She trains her eyes ceiling-ward, lids heavy, shallow breath-ed. Tony catches Gibbs' gaze, then looks at the gauze, soaking.

"_Agent Gibbs, is Miss David conscious? How much blood has she lost?_"

Gibbs keeps his eyes on Ziva's strained expression, as if he could will the blood from draining from her face, her neck, her lungs. "She's conscious, but not coherent. Lost a lot of blood."

"_Are you compressing?_"

Gibbs turns, spitting at the phone. "_Yes, we're fuc-_"

"_Boss_." Tony's voice cuts tensely through the conversation, calm demeanor thinly veiling his desperation. Ziva's head is on his shoulder, eyes closed, sweat on her lips. "We need to lay her down. She's not respons-" His chokes the end of his sentence before completion. Too much said already.

Gibbs grabs the last stack of gauze squares, pulls Ziva's legs to the side, and presses, _hard_. It shouldn't be happening this fast. It shouldn't be happening… This is too fast.

Tony holds her head in his lap, counting the fast, fluttering rise of her chest. _Breathe_. _Breathe_. One more breath. And again.

The same voice comes back to them. "_Can you give me an update on Miss David's condition, please?_"

Gibbs yells in the phone's vicinity. "She's lost too much blood and is unresponsive. Where are your _fucking_ men at?"

"_Agent Gibbs, I need you to be calm and cooperative. The men are on their way. Can you_ –"

"She's not gonna last, DiNozzo. We need to get her to the car."

Tony steels his expression into a grimace, eyes never leaving her chest. "What if they're almost here?"

"So we'll meet them on the road. I'm not gonna wait around and watch her die."

"_Agent Gibbs, the men are on their way. If you move from your location I cannot promise they will find you_."

"You've been promising they're on their way for fifteen minutes." Gibbs growls. "DiNozzo, start the car."

Tony keeps his gaze on Ziva. "Boss, I can't, I… I can't leave her."

"_Tony_. Start the car. I'll be right behind you. _That's an order_."

Tony bites his tongue. He watches Gibbs loop his arms under Ziva's shoulders and knees, her neck soft, bent unnaturally. Then he turns and doesn't look back, sprinting for the car with keys and phone in hand.

"_Agent Gibbs,_" The voice comes crackling in and out. "_I need you to update me on the situation_."

Tony holds the phone up to his mouth, breathless from running. The car engine sparks to life. "The update is we're done waiting. We're driving to the nearest hospital. Tell your men to meet us on Route 95."

The phone tumbles between the driver's seat and the shift stick. Gibbs is visible in the doorway, Ziva bundled in his arms. Tony, in the back seat, ushers her shoulders onto his lap, buckling her torso with the middle belt. Gibbs jumps the gas.

"_Agents, what is the make and model of your car?_"

"Is she still talking to us?" Gibbs yells at the isolate road ahead of them.

Ziva's breathing is sharp and ragged, noisy like chains dragging on asphalt. Tony keeps his hands pressed on her belly, feeling death pulse steady and regular against his fingers. Remnants of his emergency response class from police academy, annual CPR courses at NCIS, and various encounters with wounded victims stampede through his mind and leave it utterly blank. He wishes guiltily that Tim were here. He had spent the session in serious practice, rather than groping the mannequins and teaching the interns the finer notes of tonguing.

But Ziva had laughed. And teased him, too, leaning confidentially towards Leon's new blond ringlet of a secretary before saying, _Is that what you do to all your dates, Tony? No wonder you cannot keep a woman around for the life of you. Too busy trying to kill them, yes?_

Ziva's body shifts as the car hit a pot hole. Blood seeps onto the upholstered seats, dark, deep. Her eyelids flutter faintly. Is it possible for someone to lose this much blood?

"How's she doin', DiNozzo?" Gibbs looks into the back seat, eyes on Ziva's ashen face.

Tony rasps against the cotton in his mouth. "Not great. You know where you're goin', Gibbs?"

Suddenly, a vehicle flashes by, lights flaring. Gibbs slams on the brakes, holding the horn down long and hard. Tony falls against the passenger seat, grateful that he had buckled Ziva in.

They watch, all three breathing noisy, labored breaths as the ambulance drives a u-turn towards their direction. Gibbs opens the doors to the backseat seconds before the car is flooded with EMTs, grabbing, questioning, prodding, lifting Ziva's limp body from Tony's lap and folding the gurney into the back of the ambulance.

In minutes, Tony and Gibbs are left breathless and bloodied, alone by the side of the car. In the silence they forget to buckle. They drive.

* * *

It is too late when they return from the fifth cup of coffee that evening and stand boneless in the surgical waiting room. _She has already finished. They've transferred her from the operating room to a recovery unit. _A nurse directs them in short terms to the post-op trauma ward.

They spend another hour waiting in the curtained corner of a shared room, warding calls from Abby, McGee, Ducky, Palmer, before she is rolled in on a crisp white stretcher, tubes and alarms forming a medical halo around her prone, delicate form. But she is awake, groggy and white, but breathing.

Tony facetimes the team and shows Ziva's tired face and the cute nurse, and Gibbs runs for more coffee. And in a tiny, hospital corner, time is doled in pain meds and cat naps, fresh caffeine, and easy smiles that speak of relief and gratitude better than words. They laugh at how easy it is to forget a moment when the rubrics of simple existence are enforced by actions taken in seconds, minutes, breaths. And they come to the conclusion that life is always exactly on time.


End file.
